Nearly two weeks after Hurricane Maria devastated the island territory of Puerto Rico, the President Donald Trump visited the area and praised the federal response to the natural disaster.

The president, along with First Lady Melania Trump arrived in Puerto Rico at 11:45 a.m. (EST) Tuesday. The first family received a briefing on Hurricane Maria relief efforts from officials on the ground once they landed.

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Trump told officials and relief workers assembled in an airplane hangar that the low death toll from Hurricane Maria — he was told 16 or 17 — was a tribute to the relief efforts. “We’ve saved a lot of lives,” he said, and singled out Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello for “giving us the highest praise.”

Trump highlighted Puerto Rico’s relatively low death toll compared with “a real catastrophe like Katrina” as he opened a tour of the island’s devastation.

The president pledged an all-out effort to help the island but added: “I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack.”

“But that’s fine,” he said, “because we’ve saved a lot of lives.”

The Trumps met Puerto Ricans who were impacted by the hurricane and will soon meet with governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands, Kenneth Mapp.

Melania Trump said in a statement afterward, "To the first responders and local officials who have worked tirelessly to provide aide, on behalf of a grateful Nation I say thank you."

Departing the White House, the president briefly spoke to reporters and praised the federal efforts of responders on the ground in Puerto Rico.

"I will tell you the first responders, the military, FEMA ... they have done an incredible job in Puerto Rico," Trump said. "I appreciate very much the governor and his comments. He has said we have done an incredible job. And that's the truth."

AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

President Donald Trump, accompanied by First Lady Melania Trump, talks to reporters as he walks to board Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2017.

Amid a brief disagreement on the effectiveness of the federal response, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz was invited to the briefing and shook hands with the president.

"I will use this opportunity to reiterate the primary message: this is about saving lives, not about politics," Cruz said in a statement. "This is also about giving the people of Puerto Rico the respect we deserve; and recognizing the moral imperative to do both."

“How are you?” he asked. Her response could not be heard. He thanked her. Days earlier, Cruz said the Trump administration was “killing us with the inefficiency,” pleading for more effective federal leadership in the crisis.

Cruz was the target of tweets from the president who called her a poor leader. Trump also accused Cruz and other local officials of wanting "everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort."

“We are dying, and you are killing us with the inefficiency,” Cruz said in a news conference. “I am begging, begging anyone that can hear us, to save us from dying.”

The Mayor of San Juan, who was very complimentary only a few days ago, has now been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump.

Cruz had previously implored Trump from afar to “make sure somebody is in charge that is up to the task of saving lives,” while the president asserted that U.S. officials and emergency personnel are working all-out against daunting odds, with “incredible” results.

Trump’s acting homeland security secretary, Elaine Duke, visited the island Friday, surveying the ravaged landscape by helicopter in an hourlong tour, driving past still-flooded streets, twisted billboards and roofs with gaping holes, and offering encouragement to some of the 10,000 emergency personnel she says the U.S. government has on the ground.

Duke tried, too, to move on from the remarks she made a day earlier in which she called the federal relief effort a “good-news story.” But on that front, she ran into winds as fierce as Maria.

“Let me clarify,” she said Friday upon her arrival in San Juan. She said she meant “it was good news that people of Puerto Rico and many public servants of the United States are working together.”

According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, there are now more than 10,000 federal officials on the ground on the island, and 45 percent of customers now have access to drinking water. Businesses are also beginning to re-open, with 60 percent of retail gas stations now up and running.

The Health and Human Services Department says federal medical teams with their own equipment and supplies have been sent to help provide care at Centro Medico, a major trauma center in San Juan. Additional teams have been sent to five hospitals in other parts of the island.

The department has also placed a liaison in each hospital that’s open, to make sure the facilities can get timely shipments of fuel needed to keep generators running, as well as medical supplies.

For many, however, Washington’s response isn’t enough. On Monday, the nonprofit relief group Oxfam announced that it would be taking the rare step of intervening in an American disaster, citing its outrage over what it called a “slow and inadequate response.”

95 percent of electricity customers remain without power, including some hospitals. Much of the countryside is still struggling to access such basic necessities as food, fresh water and cash.